Taylor household, Canberra: specialist findings

Release B for the Canberra home: what a twelve-month measurement year found, the specialists' implications, and the data as CSV. Synthetic case data, handed over in week 7.

Synthetic case data. This is a generated measurement year, produced by the course's model to be consistent with the Canberra home. It is not a measurement and no instrument recorded it. It stands in for the year the story says passed between week 7 and Assignment 2, and it is identical for every student who took this home, whatever their Assignment 1said.

Memo

Common Ground Engineering, specialist team, 2028-04-14 · measurement year April 2027 to March 2028

• Dr Mara Quinlan — water systems and hydraulics
• Tomasz Ferreira — soils and horticulture
• Aisha Rahman — monitoring, data quality and records

The specialists report conditions and what follows from them. They do not choose the system. That is your recommendation to make inAssignment 2.

What the year found

The measured year, month by month

An extract. The full table, with every fixture group, the bore, overflow and the quality flags, is in SYNTHETIC-monthly.csv below.

Growing zones

Water quality

Hydraulics

Tank outlet at RL 100.75 m; highest fixture is the laundry tap at RL 101.85 m, giving a static lift of 1.1 m. Currently served: garden tap (gravity).

Mains pressure at the laundry tap 52 m head static; the tank's gravity tap delivers under 1 m of head and could not run a sprinkler.

What it costs the household now

• Electricity at $0.33 per kWh.
• Reticulated water at $3.10 per kL, plus a supply charge of $740 a year.
• Gutters cleaned twice, 3 hours each, both in autumn.
• Compost tumbler turned weekly; about 20 minutes a week in total with feeding.

What the specialists conclude

1. The 5 kL tank on the garage roof filled only in late winter and was empty at the end of every month from November to April; the house roof, almost five times larger, is not connected.
2. Indoor use was close to the course convention, with toilet and laundry together about a third of it: a steady year-round demand that rainwater could serve if the client wants it to.
3. Air temperature fell below zero on 58 nights in the year, nearly all between May and September; anything installed outside needs frost protection or it will not meet the winter-reliability priority.
4. The herb strip's poor growth is explained by shade and eucalypt roots, not by soil chemistry.

What they could not settle

• Whether the client would accept rainwater in the laundry if toilet flushing alone does not justify a pump.
• How much of the back lawn the children actually use; the 100 m² figure is the client's, not a measurement.

Gaps in the record

• 2027-07, tank_end_kl: Tank level logger failed from 9 to 26 July; levels interpolated from two manual dips

A gap is marked as a gap. Interpolated values are flagged in thequality_flag column of the monthly CSV, and anything you conclude from those months should carry the same flag.

Download the findings

Every file's first line says what it is. The data dictionary gives each column its unit, meaning and kind — synthetic measured year, derived,calendar or sourced. Keep those apart in your own workbook.